Thursday

Nov 29, 2018 at 6:12 AMNov 29, 2018 at 11:26 AM

Unemployment in Massachusetts is below 4 percent; consumer confidence is up; and wages have even begun to edge upward. All positive economic signs - unless you're one of the many small businesses looking to hire part-time or entry-level workers.

In Maynard, Help Wanted signs hanging in the windows at Gigi's Restaurant and Blue Coyote Grille illustrate the hiring dilemma.

Laura Hobson, who with her husband Johnny owns Serendipity Café in Maynard, said with the rise in minimum wage, fewer people are looking for jobs.

“I guess one of the pleasant things about minimum wage going up is that people don’t need multiple jobs anymore,” she said. “But conversely it’s made it harder to find those people.”

Right now the café is almost fully staffed, although it wasn’t that long ago that they had to close for a day because both Hobson and her husband were ill, and they didn’t have the staff to run the coffee shop. All of the food at the café, including the bread and baked goods, is made from scratch.

Having to close the café for lack of staff hurts their bottom line and also means longer hours for Hobson and her husband.

“Johnny and I are picking up the slack because it’s so difficult to hire people that work well together and are available the hours that we need,” she said.

Some of their most successful employees have been teenagers, but when school starts, they are not available during the day when the coffee shop is open.

And then there are the people that get hired, but who don’t show up to work, she said.

“People have a perception of the service industry that it is something anyone can do but they don’t realize it is physically demanding and it is mentally challenging sometimes,” Hobson said. “It can be stressful.”

Higher costs

According to Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, paying the state minimum wage is proving difficult. Currently $11 per hour, the minimum will jump to $12 in January 2019. Hurst said for local businesses, that number is really $15-16 per hour because owners are paying for state-mandated insurance and sick days.

“The first 10 years that we will potentially be open, minimum wage will have gone up 86 percent,” said Hobson.

Most of their staff makes more than the minimum wage, she said, because they share tips.

“If I raised [the price] of coffee 86 percent people would have something to say,” said Hobson.

So they hire fewer people.

“It’s a balance,” said Hobson. “We’ve cut back a little on the staff but it means we’re working more. We haven’t had to let anyone go, but when someone leaves we hire less people.”

Hurst said many entry-level or part-time jobs are going to teenagers and residents new to the U.S. With that said, Hurst said fewer teens are choosing to work, due to school, extra curricular activities, or other obligations. He said 39 states have lower teen wages. Eleven, including Massachusetts, do not. A teen wage, designed for workers ages 14 to 17, is slightly less than minimum wage, giving teenagers the money and experience they are looking for at a lower cost to local businesses.

Hobson said when they first took over the café, they hired workers as young as 14. One of those workers stayed for five years, becoming an assistant baker, before leaving recently for college. However, she said, a 14-year-old can only do about 30 percent of what an older worker can do, so they have raised their hiring age to 16.

Finding a way to work

It's no secret housing costs are high in many communities northwest of Boston. For lower-wage earners, it just is not feasible to pay a mortgage and taxes in some towns. So that means commuting, made complicated and tedious by a dearth of public transportation. The struggle to find transportation has become so real that in some extreme cases it has pushed businesses to cut back on hours, forced managers and owners to work the floor of restaurants and shops, or even forced some stores to close.

The 495/MetroWest Suburban Edge Community Commission, co-chaired by state Rep. Kate Hogan, D-Stow, is pushing to evaluate and create more viable modes of public transportation.

Hogan said a recent report from the Public Policy Center at UMass Dartmouth, found, more than 33,000 residents along the Interstate 495 corridor commute to Boston to work, while almost 200,000 people working in the region do not live in the region.

“On average, 495/MetroWest residents who commute out of the area for work earn higher wages than those commuting into the region,” according to the report.

"A robust regional transportation system is vital to ensuring inclusive economic growth and access to our region’s employment opportunities," stated Hogan. "While there have been noteworthy successes making a meaningful difference in access to transit and jobs – such as the growth of the Hudson Shuttle from a pilot program to the permanent MetroWest Regional Transit Authority Route 15 and the transit services for residents of all abilities provided by the CrossTown Connect – there is still a lot of work to be done."